Isolation for Serbia if 2012 ambition fails

ON MONDAY (11 October), EU foreign ministers meeting in Luxembourg reached a series of decisions which could breathe new life into the dormant relationship between the European Union and Serbia-Montenegro. This followed last week’s visit to Belgrade by External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten and High Representative Javier Solana and their recommendations.

Serbia-Montenegro has slipped behind the other four West Balkan states, which were recognized as potential members of the EU a couple of years ago. Since then Croatia, Macedonia and Albania have either signed, or are currently negotiating, a Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA), while Bosnia and Herzegovina is participating in a feasibility study which should lead on to such an agreement, the first step on the road to membership negotiations.

Serbia-Montenegro, the largest and most populous of the states, has not even reached the feasibility study stage. There have been two main reasons for this. One is its failure to cooperate fully with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), whose chief prosecutor, Carla del Ponte, was in Luxembourg on Monday to give an up-to-date report to the foreign ministers.

Equally to blame has been the virtual non-operation of the institutions of the state union between Serbia and Montenegro, with whom the EU was expecting to negotiate. The union will remain, at least theoretically, in force until February 2006, after which the question of independence for Montenegro may be considered.

The EU does not want to wait until then before meaningful negotiations towards an SAA can get under way. On Monday it decided on a new policy, under which, while it would deal with the state union on issues that fall within its competence, the EU will talk separately to the governments of the two republics on those areas that are under their control. These include trade and the internal market.

The new EU initiative may have been prompted by the encouraging development of the election in July of Boris Tadic as president of Serbia. Tadic was in Brussels last week. Although he has few executive powers, he is an influential figure who is an outspoken advocate of full cooperation with the ICTY, political and economic liberalism and working closely with the EU.

His election should act as a spur to the hesitant Serbian Prime Minister, Vojislav Kostunica, to give a more decisive lead to his government. It could encourage him to reinforce his administration by bringing in the Democratic Party (DS), of the assassinated premier Zoran Djindzic, which is now led by Tadic.

The DS has been in opposition since March, when Kostunica finally succeeded in forming his government, three months after the parliamentary elections. Although there was a clear majority in the assembly for democratic reform, personality differences between Kostunica and Djindjic’s supporters got in the way of forming a coalition that included both their parties.

Kostunica even considered forming a coalition with the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical party (SRS) of indicted war criminal Vojislav Seselj, which is the largest party in parliament. The SRS was effectively vetoed by other potential partners.

Kostunica ended up with a minority government formed by his own Democratic Party of Serbia and three smaller parties.

This government has had to rely on support from Milosevic’s Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) to maintain itself in power and its legislative record has since been patchy.

An opportunity may soon exist for the reconstruction of the government. Tadic has recently called on Kosovar Serbs to use their votes in the elections on 23 October for a parliamentary assembly, which many of their leaders had been determined to boycott since the incidents of ethnic cleansing by Kosovar Albanians last March.

This was a brave move by Tadic and the Radicals have tabled a motion in the Serbian parliament to remove him from the presidency.

If Kostunica, who reluctantly threw his support behind Tadic in the second round of the presidential election, can include the DS in his team, he will provide himself with a parliamentary majority and a much firmer base for pursuing his reform programme.

This would send an encouraging message to the international community, at a time when donor help is beginning to dry up and foreign investment is increasingly hard to come by.

It will need to be backed up, however, by a number of other crucial steps.

Most urgent is the need to provide whole-hearted cooperation with the Hague court, stepping up the drive to find Radko Mladic, who is believed to be living in Serbia (while Radovan Karajic is likely to be in the Serbian Republic of Bosnia) and handing over three other generals who have been indicted.

Equally important is to reform the judiciary and the media to make them functional and independent. And to provide increased security for national minorities, including Hungarians in Vojvodina who have recently complained of harassment by Serbs, though Tadic claimed during his visit to Brussels that the incidents had been exaggerated.

Serbia may now be at a crossroads. If it seizes the opportunities open to it, Tadic’s claim, made last week to European Voice, that it was a “realistic expectation” that Serbia could join the EU by 2012, could prove justified. If not, his country faces a long period of isolation and further decline.

Dick Leonard is former assistant editor of The Economist and writes on Belgian affairs for The Bulletin. He is a former UK Labour MEP and author of many books.

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